Amid many trials, a frenzy over Jodi Arias

May 12, 2013
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Jodi Arias during her murder trial at Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix on May 8. Arias was convicted of stabbing and shooting to death Travis Alexander, 30, in his suburban Phoenix home in June 2008. / Rob Schumacher, The Arizona Republic

by Richard Ruelas, The Arizona Republic

by Richard Ruelas, The Arizona Republic

PHOENIX -- It was a first-degree murder case. Maricopa County prosecutors were seeking the death penalty, the harshest punishment, reserved for the worst crimes, the ones with details that shock the conscience of the community.

Satellite trucks ringed the courthouse Wednesday. Camera crews waited out front under tents that shielded them from the early May sunshine. Reporters from local and national media outlets prepared for a long day at the courthouse.

But the reporters were not inside the fifth-floor courtroom for this case, the case of Michael Lee Franklin, accused of robbing his 64-year-old neighbor, then beating her to death inside her Tempe home.

Instead, they were camped out waiting for a verdict in the sensational trial of Jodi Arias, who was accused of killing her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander.

Amid the live Internet coverage, the daily media scene out front and nightly updates on TV, the Jodi Arias trial fed a crescendo of coverage since it began in the first days of 2013. Each day of bloody photographs and sex-tinged testimony ramped up interest. Then Arias herself took the stand to face graphic questions about her sex life and the slaying she said was in self-defense.

The video streams and TV shows netted ever-rising ratings and online readership, and the phenomenon seemed unstoppable by the time Wednesday arrived. That day, a jury delivered its verdict on Arias - guilty, of first-degree murder - and the coverage rolled on.

Down the hallway from the Arias hearing, the Franklin case played out with no one there to cover it. Franklin, 35, had been accused in the 2011 robbery and killing of 64-year-old Bonnie Raudman.

Police say Franklin made Raudman drive to an ATM and withdraw money. Then he beat her to death, leaving her body in her home. Her husband, who was in the hospital, had asked someone to check on her because she wasn't answering the phone. A neighbor finally found her.

Police said she died of blows and stabs to her neck.

On Wednesday, Franklin pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. The deal avoided a trial and allowed him to escape the death penalty.

After the judge accepted the plea deal, Bonnie Raudman's family filed out into the hallway. Yards away were about a dozen reporters waiting for the Arias jury, who had yet to show up to the courthouse.

The family declined to talk to an Arizona Republic reporter about whether they felt their loved one's death merited more coverage, or if they were grateful for the anonymity. They walked to the elevator, and out of the courthouse, undisturbed by the horde of media.

Time and again, one trial captures the public imagination while countless others pass quietly.

Sometimes the case features a celebrity defendant. Other times, sex, violence and intrigue can turn a formerly anonymous set of players into household names. Still, the resulting public fixation can be a surprise - even for the people who help feed it.

"When we started it, we didn't necessarily say, 'Oh, if we do this right, there'll be a circus at the end of it,'" said Scot Safon, general manager of HLN, the cable network that helped drive the Arias phenomenon as much as any outlet. "We really didn't know. We just thought the basics of the trial were interesting."

Cable-network calculus

After her arrest, Jodi Arias gave a jailhouse interview.

"God knows I'm innocent. I know I'm innocent," Arias said in the September 2008 article. "One day when I'm before God, I will not be held accountable by God for Travis's death."

The story ran on the inside pages of The Republic.

But in time, the case came to seem tailor-made for cable TV and saturation coverage.

Arias insisted she had nothing to do with the murder, despite a camera found in the washing machine at Alexander's home. That camera contained naked pictures of Arias and Alexander, and then photos of his dead body from the same day. Arias maintained her innocence as the trial neared and prosecutors moved to seek the death penalty.

The evidence in the case would encompass Arias and Alexander's intense sexual relationship, with graphic photos, explicit phone calls and the murder.

At the end of 2011, HLN's website carried a story that said the Arias case could be the trial of the year in 2012.

The network had been in Phoenix in 2012 to cover the Baby Gabriel case. In that case, a woman, Elizabeth Johnson, was accused of killing her infant. The baby's body was never found and Johnson changed her story, telling the baby's father she killed it and telling authorities she gave the boy to a couple in Texas.

HLN was getting progress reports about the Arias case even then, according to emails between the network and employees of the court's public-information bureau. The emails were released to The Republic under a public-records request.

In June 2012, a producer sent a note to thank the county's public-information staff for being so helpful in the Johnson case.

"I hope all went as smoothly on your end as it did on ours," the producer wrote. "We're hoping for an opportunity to drive you crazy again soon."

HLN's aim is to provide a steady stream of stories that can hook its viewers, Safon said in an interview Friday from his office in Atlanta.

"A lot of times, it's a scandal or a crime," Safon said. "Usually, it's a story about somebody's bad behavior."

The Arias trial faced a string of setbacks amid disputes over evidence and her representation. In December 2012, another story that aired on HLN said the long-delayed trial would be the talk of 2013.

Expanding coverage

Safon said the network decided by December 2012 to provide gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Arias trial.

It set up two robotic cameras by the jury box, and one manned camera in the spectator area of the gallery. It also parked two mobile studios near the courthouse. City records show the network paid $3,640 for the space.

And beginning in late December 2012, HLN staff members sent many requests to the court's public-information officers regarding the Arias case. The requests showed a hunger for tidbits of information.

Producers wanted to come in early, possibly at 6:30 a.m., to do a behind-the-scenes look at the courtroom.

They wanted to know the name of the court reporter, whose face could be seen next to shots of the witnesses.

They wanted an up-close look at a bloody crime-scene photo that was not reproducing well over the television feed.

They wanted to know if rumors were true that the defense team needed a law-enforcement escort as it ate lunch. And whether dismissed jurors were fair game for interviews.

They asked whether Arias had a migraine on a particular day. And whether some seats could be reserved for anchors coming into cover the trial.

Opening statements began Jan. 2. But the saga became a far bigger event when Arias herself took the stand in February. Contrary to her assertions after her arrest, she confessed to killing Alexander, saying he had attacked her in a rage and she had defended herself.

By March, the network altered its lineup, adding shows to provide even more coverage than its usual host-driven shows allowed.

A television "jury" appeared each night on "HLN After Dark," pronouncing verdicts on various aspects of the Arias trial. In the last few weeks of the trial, a second HLN "jury box" was assembled at a soundstage set up at the CityScape shopping center across from Maricopa County Superior Court in downtown Phoenix.

Although many criticized the network - and the rest of the media - for providing so much coverage, the trial did have an audience.

HLN's ratings jumped substantially since January, up by 50 percent compared with the same period in 2012, according to a network release.

Other outlets benefited, too. Azcentral.com streamed the proceedings live and uncensored. The site saw a spike in online traffic with visitors logging in from all over the globe.

Jane Velez-Mitchell, an HLN host, laid out the aspects of the Arias trial that drove the cable channel's coverage during an interview with KPNX-TV, Phoenix, on Wednesday.

"You have an attractive defendant," she said. "You have a very attractive victim. You have this incredible sexual content. I mean, the sex tape played in open court is a shocker. ... There are so many fascinating facets of this case.

"And here's the thing. Criminal trials are one of the few venues in our culture where we really get to play voyeur. We really get to see behind closed doors, and we got to see it all play out and form our own conclusions."

The decision

On Wednesday, after two full days of deliberation, the jury returned its verdict. The imminent news brought a crowd of spectators to the courthouse steps, some chanting, "Justice for Travis!"

Phoenix television stations went to live coverage by the time the verdict was handed to Judge Sherry Stephens. Arias was guilty of premeditated murder. The crowd outside the courtroom raised fists in a cheer.

On the same day, Michael Lee Franklin pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the beating death of his Tempe neighbor.

About an hour later, Crisantos Moroyoqui-Yocupicio, 39, pleaded no contest to second-degree murder. He was charged with beheading a man in a Chandler apartment in 2010 who, police said, stole drugs from a Mexican cartel.

And, in Stephens' courtroom,a conference was held in the case of a man accused of shooting his neighbor for no particular reason.

The judge also scheduled a hearing in a conspiracy case, but finding a date was hard because a defense attorney had a complicated schedule.

He told Stephens he had two other first-degree murder cases this summer, including one involving the 2010 shooting death of Chandler undercover police Officer Carlos Ledesma, who was ambushed while entering a Phoenix home to make a drug deal.

Those cases had not attracted any apparent attention from cable news. But according to emails sent while the Arias case proceeded, others had:

-- Avtar Grewal, a man accused of killing his wife in her Ahwatukee Foothills home in 2007 and then buying a one-way ticket to his native India.

-- Jerice Hunter, a woman accused of murder in the October 2011 disappearance of her 5-year-old daughter, Jhessye Shockley.

-- John and Sammantha Allen, accused of first-degree murder in the death of Sammantha Allen's 10-year-old cousin Ame Deal, who died stuffed inside a footlocker in July 2011 - punishment, police said, for taking a popsicle on a hot summer day.

-- Marissa DeVault, a Gilbert woman charged with first-degree murder and accused of beating her husband to death with a hammer. She told a detective she was weary after years of abuse.

"We may be interested in that case next," said HLN producer Grace Wong in an email to Karen Arra, head of the county court's public-information unit. "It's the woman who clubbed her husband to death - also a battered woman's case."

But that will not be the next trial on HLN. That one, as much as court proceedings can be planned, has already been set.

As the Arias jury deliberated, the network began running promotions for another sensational case. It is in Orlando, Fla., and involves a 48-year-old woman named Caryn Kelley who is accused of shooting her boyfriend and someone whom you probably haven't heard about. Yet.